Wearing A Headlamp!

Ohhh Mount Ijen, how I love you. How you’ve forced me to make the cheesiest metaphor alive, but I just can’t help it.

Mount Ijen is a mountain all the way on the Eastern edge of Java, overlooking the coast and Bali neighboring to the East. The mountain is famous for being one of the only two places on earth where blue fire exists. The mountain is a sulfur mine and a volcano, so when there is molten lava coming out of the sulfur crater in the mountain, the sulfuric gas turns it blue. Unfortunately, there was a recent eruption that left a lot of particles in the air, so we were not able to see it. The trek was still a wonderful experience, regardless.

I managed to weasel my way into the American program’s weekend excursion to the mountain. Although it felt like asking a pre-determined friend group if you could join, and then being told “if you want,” every time they shared their inside jokes, I was glad I joined. They’re all a lot more fluent in Indonesian than me, which also benefitted my learning over the weekend. We drove from Malang to a town near the mountain after class on Friday, stopped for an hour rest in a hotel, and then got up at 1am to start our trek. We began at 2am by meeting our guide at the base of the mountain where he gave us our headlamps and gas masks. We, however, didn’t know that we wouldn’t be able to see the blue fire, so my friends and I were absolutely BOOKING it up the mountain. Then, our guide had to tell us to chill. We weren’t going to see it, and we would just be stuck at the top in the cold waiting for the sunrise. The trek wasn’t anything too long, but it was quite steep, and it was nice to sweat in the otherwise cold mountain air. For a few hours, it felt good to just wear a headlamp in the complete darkness and only focus on what was directly in front of me, what the small diameter of the headlamp would show me. Present. Just like I had been realizing these past few weeks, being present is so key. Enjoying the intense feelings of the moment, focusing on one thing at a time. The rest of my worries fell away when wearing a headlamp. See the cheesy analogy?

Along the route, there are many workers on the mountain, all wearing flip flops and aggressively chain smoking cigarettes. Some push carts and yell “Lamborghini, Lamborghini!” as they walk past, offering to take you up in this humble version of a taxi. They make money based off of how much you weigh. The more famous workers on the mountain are the sulfur miners. Once again, in flip flops and smoking cigarettes, they carry loads of sulfur from the mine down to the bottom. The maximum load that many of them carry is 90 kilograms and they make the trip four times a day.

When we reached the top of the mountain, it was not by any means the best hike I’ve ever done, and it wasn’t the best view I’ve ever seen. But I was completely overwhelmed with gratitude. All I could do was sit there and stare at the view of this one particular hill ahead of me. In the morning sunshine, it was golden. And it hit, I am somewhere that most people will never go in their lives. I have an able body to take me up there. I sobbed, to be honest. There I was, watching the sun rise in soft pink and gold over the lush mountains unique to these tropical climates over the sea crashing against the shore. And behind me, a bright blue, deadly toxic sulfur lake carved out of a vast canyon. I didn’t mind not seeing the blue fire—for a while I forgot that was a big part of it. But I hope to go back again and try one more time, if possible. Just to really prove I’m the luckiest girl in the world

After returning to the bottom of the mountain around 7am, we ate fruit and instant noodles and eventually made our way to our next stop: a beach town called Pasir Putih. We stayed at a hotel right on the beach. The water is extremely shallow for a long distance out into the sea, and we played around in the water for a while, watching the sunset. One of the staff members on our trip is from the town, so his mom cooked our entire group of 17 a home cooked Indonesia meal with tempe, fried corn cakes, fish, tiny shrimp, and baby ice cream cones from the convenience store. The hotel didn’t have running water for several hours, which really helped to ground the whole experience. But eventually I ate and showered and couldn’t have been happier to go to bed that night.

The next morning, we went to the beach at 8am for a snorkeling tour. We all packed into a creaky little boat and made our way out not too far off the coast. They gave us bread to chum up the water once we reached our spot, and immediately schools of tropical fish were surrounding us. I swam out further to a couple of reefs and found a clown fish with a protecting mate (I assume) that would swim up to us every time we tried to get a closer look. It even swam right into my friends goggles, which was cute that he thought he was intimidating. I also saw a puffer fish (pre-puff), a rainbow fish (from my favorite childhood book!), a fish like the one with a scar from Nemo, flat yellow fish, and this unique purple and silver fish that look like it had Wolverine scars running along each side of it’s face in bright yellow. The trip wrapped up with us eating chicken sate with peanut sauce and rice balls prepared by a woman right on the beach, and the school staff members cut up the best mangoes I’ve ever had, apparently the region is famous for them. My heaven.

The weekend was truly perfect. I haven’t had the easiest time here, and I’ve questioned what I’m even doing more often than I’ve felt sure in myself. But these experiences all made me realize how incredibly lucky I am to have these good things as well, even if I have to deal with a language barrier and frequent minor food poisoning for 10 months.

Oh! And I’m here for school! About that! My midterm two weeks ago went well. During the speaking portion, my teacher reminded me that during my placement exam, I could only say “saya suka apel,” or “I like apples” (thank you Duolingo for the incredibly useful language). He is proud of all the complex sentences I can say now. I agree I am growing a lot, but with that comes the curse of really wanting to be able to express yourself in conversations with people that could be real relationships, not just survival words and phrases. I get unbelievably frustrated when I can’t think of the word that I need to truly convey how I am feeling, and I can tell the relationship with that person could just stop right there.

Of course, my learning outside of the classroom is the most fruitful part. This week, my friend told me the reason the bathroom floor is always so wet is because people often just pee on the floor and wash it down with the hose because they prefer the squatting position. As im, even when there is a toilet, people squat over the drain on the floor and dump water on it. That is also why there are signs to squat HOVERING above the toilet seat (or sit on it), rather than squatting with your feet ON the toilet seat as pictured below. In this moment, I was really able to measure my comfortability with this country as I didn’t feel too surprised.

I also went to an amusement park last weekend. It felt nice to have a local experience, rather than a specifically “cultural” one. I got to live life like local people do on their weekends. I appreciated not having the pressure to do something traditional, per say, but just run around and have fun and know that that is learning, too.

I’ve been trying more foods, which has probably made the biggest difference in my comfortability level here. It’s not that I didn’t want to experiment before, but I simply didn’t know so many foods existed. It probably doesn’t help that I black out every time I go to the student kantin and just ask what isn’t spicy there. It turns out there’s a whole MENU at all of these places! The world is my oyster! Though the Ibu that grabbed my butt and called me beautiful now asks where I’ve been whenever I haven’t visited her counter because I’ve been off experiencing a great new world. And today, I was shown my new favorite food. It’s called tahu telor or “egg tofu” which is essentially an egg omelette on top of rice and covered in peanut sauce with lots of peanuts in it. Wow.

Right before I left for Ijen, my friend in the Peace Corps here was randomly passing through, and I was able to see him for just 15 minutes. I didn’t realize how good it would feel to see a friendly face until I completely involuntarily started crying after walking away. I haven’t seen him in two years, but also just hugging someone that I know was such a release. Perhaps…there is a word for all these phenomenas that I am going through. Just like it turns out “culture shock” can describe everything I went through when I arrived, “touched starved” can describe some of the emptiness I still feel now!

And of course, last week was Halloween. My school through a party with all the same games I played at my elementary school parties growing up, and there was a ridiculous amount of food. The party ended up just making me miss my favorite season at home. Ironically, I wore a headlamp then too for my tour guide costume. Really, it was the only thing I could wear with clothes just from my own closet. When people asked if I was a tourist or Steve Irwin or Jane Goodall, I said yes to those answers, too. I guess I can’t walk around with an actual headlamp on all the time. But if I can on special holidays when I get to pretend to be someone else I’d really like to be or when I go on the most grounding weekend trip, then maybe it is something I should incorporate into my everyday life. So, I’ll live by the headlamp. Only focusing on what I can see directly in front of me.

P.S. SO MANY PICTURES THIS WEEK you might have to open the link (not just in your email) to view them all!

Thank you for reading my words. As always, feel free to chat me in the Substack app, email me in response to this, or WhatsApp me as I won’t be getting iMessages here. Sending handshakes from Indonesia (they don’t hug here :/). Pictures below!